By Nishant Arora
New Delhi, Dec 5 (IANS) With distruptive technologies fast gaining ground, global IT companies are realigning their focus in the Indian market. Sensing opportunity, desktop virtualisation leader Citrix is all set to help customers build secure, modern workplaces by unifying apps, data and services.

Work is transforming and there are many forces at play. The most notable is the rise of Cloud, Mobile, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) which are creating new business models at the cost of old ones and empowering users like never before.

At this juncture, says Makarand Joshi, Area Vice President and Country Head, India Subcontinent, Citrix, the scale of digital transformation at enterprises requires a thoughtful strategy that balances data security with ease of access and maintains control while optimising user flexibility.

“We at Citrix have strategically realigned our focus on providing solutions in the Indian market that aid the creation of digital workspaces. We intend to provide solutions that allow for integration of transformative technologies without causing interruption to the delivery continuity,” Joshi told IANS in his first interview to any media after joining Citrix.

Joshi, who was associated in various leadership roles in sales, marketing and operations with Microsoft, joined Citrix in August this year. He is responsible for accelerating and transforming the business in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Mauritius and Nepal.

“Citrix will continue to support businesses in their transition, through focused offerings in the Cloud, mobility and the virtualisation space in India,” Joshi added.

Citrix provides server, application and desktop virtualisation, networking, software as a service and cloud computing technologies.

For the third quarter in fiscal year 2017, Citrix achieved revenues of $691 million, compared to $669 million in the third quarter last year — representing a three per cent revenue growth.

Citrix solutions are in use by more than 400,000 organisations and 100 million users globally, including in India.

“We understand that Indian businesses are heterogeneous and there are no one-fit-all solutions that will work. In alignment with these specific requirements that differ in factors like scale and IT needs, Citrix is well positioned to deliver suitable solutions that effectively address businesses’ definite tasks,” Joshi noted.

The world is headed for a future in which everything will be connected to the Cloud — not just traditional servers and clients but any kind of industrial plant, building, vehicle, machinery and device.

“Indian conglomerates see digitisation as a necessity to be competitive and engage their customer base actively. Citrix is helping many enterprises achieve this balance. Historically, our virtualisation technologies have been chosen by many government entities to deliver a secure, reliable and accelerated access to traditional distributed computing,” the top company executive said.

With nearly 5,000 customers in India, including Mafatlal Industries, BPO firm Aegis, Pune-based multi-speciality Hospital Ruby Hall Clinic and agri-sciences company PI Industries, Citrix has been in the country for the past 15-20 years, but the real journey started some five-seven years ago when enterprises started adopting Cloud and real-time data analytics.

The company is now set to hire and invest more in India.

“We are bullish on India and looking forward to cement our position in an ever-growing market. The country is fast embracing technology. At the same time, the speed at which our Indian customers are implementing Citrix solutions is growing exponentially,” Stanimira Koleva, Vice President, Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), Citrix, had told IANS earlier.

According to Joshi, there has been a thrust for digitisation of processes and financial institutions in the country are fast embracing digital operations, hyper-integrated banking apps and back-office automation.

“Citrix is the primary technology provider in this space. We have found a number of government, banking, finance and insurance companies that are activity pursing digital transformation and simultaneously investing in security to protect their assets,” Joshi told IANS.

Citirx technologies enable apps and data to run securely in the data centre instead of the end-point device which has multiple security vulnerabilities. They allow employees to access all apps and data on any device, while giving IT the means to maintain security with uniform policy enforcement, full compliance and efficient control.

“Besides the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector, we see the public, telecom and ITeS sectors undergoing tremendous transformation. They are steadily adopting Cloud, mobility and virtualisation solutions to bring efficiency to their operations,” Joshi said.

With India headed in the direction of becoming a mobile-first, digital economy, Citrix expects the demand for secure solutions to become universal.

“Citrix has always been vocal about partners playing a crucial role in cementing our position as a reliable and credible solutions provider in the India market. We have managed to gain a sizable market share because of our partners’ successful articulation of our offerings,” Joshi noted.

(Nishant Arora can be contacted at [email protected])

–IANS
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